I. Yesterday, while I was feeling completely unanchored and tossed adrift on this internal storm I’m navigating, I remembered these words:
It’s a harder trick
Turning love that’s lost in betrayal into something
Beside bitterness into anything beside this rage
– Jim Carroll
And then I went running to Spotify to see if I could find the album from whence it comes, and lo, there it was, and I cried my way through it because, yes. This.
Nobody is going to ruin me
If I have to I will ruin myself
I’ve spent too much time
Expended angelic energy
On my own disintegration to hand the contract over
To another now
As if it were
A finished painting
Needing only a signature
You are not going to get to me
You are never going to be with me
As once was
There will always be the poem
I will climb on top of it
And come
In and out of time
Cocking my head to the side slightly
As I finish shaking, melting then
Into its body, its soft skin
There will always be the poem, long after the rage and bitterness are gone.
II. The rage and bitterness are very much here, today, though so I’m a tumult. I am compass wildly spinning again because I can NOT get my brain to shut up.
If you meant it you would have done something about it. So many broken promises. You drove me there and dropped me off. Lovebombed me for a year and then knocked me – *ME* – down, peg by peg, until I didn’t know which way was up. So many mixed messages, so much subtext, so many lies.
And I don’t mind that so much because it helps me find my way forward and away from that ever happening to me again, ever.
The part I mind is the part where my knees buckle when a song comes on and I see your face, and I hear your laugh, and I remember what it felt like when you grabbed my hand to hold when I sat in the passenger’s seat, and how much I loved to climb you like a tree when you finally returned to me after what always felt like a goddamned eternity.
Knees buckle, and tears come, and I doubt myself so hard – doubt my way forward, doubt that any part of it was even *real*, wonder if maybe I really am too much (that old worn-out tape really fucking needs to go) and I hate you for that.
I love you and I hate you, and from what I’m hearing from the grief experts, that’s pretty normal, but fuck.
I’d rather just love you and forgive you and send you on your way into whatever future you build for yourself without me, but my love, my own, I am not there yet.
Give me time.
III. I do what I have to do.
IV. Onward.
***
V. I put that little row of asterisks up there because I want to make a clear separation between that part of today and the next part where I snap the elastic band that I’m wearing on my wrist and say “Enough, Effy” every time I think of him. I want to be with myself today. I have therapy. I have filming to do. I keep tucking my thumb between my first and index finger to remind myself to come back to the present moment. I keep using the switch words Myrna gave me to pattern interrupt. I snap my fingers and bellow ‘SNAP OUT OF IT’ out loud.
Fucked up as a soup sandwich.
VI. SNAP OUT OF IT.
VII. I spent the morning on the front stoop – with the dogs for a while before their barking at everything drove me batshit, and then solo. There were about a hundred sparrows on my front lawn, having breakfast, and it softened me so much that I felt my high alert slip down to medium. One of them took a dust bath right at my feet, and I was so enchanted that I forgot to take a picture.
If that’s all the beauty I get today, it will have been enough, but…
VIII. My lovely neighbours (Jessie and Emi) passed by me on their way out for breakfast. I am not brave enough to indulge in such things right now, so I wished them a happy breakfast and waved them on.
“Can we bring you back some?”
“You’d do that?”
“Of course!”
And they took my order and brought me back two perfectly sunny side up eggs, some of the best hash browns I’ve had in a long time, bacon, and toast, and delivered it right to my door when they returned home.
I really, really like where I’m living.
IX. Full Bush Tour started today.
X. Self-iso ends on Monday and I might have drinks with a friend.
P.S. You are not going to ruin me.
I can’t wear the rubberband anymore, I made myself bleed. It was a year on Labor Day….he keeps interjecting himself into my life. Sometimes I wondr what I did to deserve this torment. He fucked around. He lied. She came to the house to tell me about it one Saturday morning. I was in bed. He answered the door….
I have been on both sides of that equation. I am so sorry.
Thank you for sharing so openly and honestly, Effy. I understand your patreon doubt (ie oversharing and people maybe not signing up for that but they do have the option of not reading ‘diary’) and somewhat the vulnerbility after sharing (recently shared a very honest memoir with my writing group). But trust that your blogs are inspiring and encouraging with their glimpses of intense emotions mixed with simple delights and displays of care. Witnessing you navigating all this and keeping you close. <3
That means everything to me. Thank you.
1. Just saying it out loud helps.
2. Just hearing it helps.
3. Me thanks you, as reading helps clean up the little pieces still hanging around from so long ago when my heart broke into a million pieces. The chards remind me & I nod in agreement with you.
4. The birds know.
Lifting you up in love.
d
The birds know. <3 I love that.
I feel you, I hear you and I see “you”!!! Tons of love and embraces being sent to you from me on these winds of “pure conscious love” via our souls universe. Keeping you close in my mind eye and heart dearest Effy.
I felt that. Thank you. <3
You are only too much for someone who is not enough.
Thank you for all your honesty.
I have left it too late to walk away: I have settled and made myself smaller.
You are an inspiration to me to find ways to grow a little, even at age 69 this week.
“You are only too much for someone who is not enough.”
Pretty much the message I’m getting in therapy.
And, also, just an offering: It is never too late. <3
Keep writing. I love you.
I love you, too. <3
the way you share so honestly brings me to tears. good friends help straighten the backbone. i hope i find that someday.
love & kisses & magical wishes…
~*~
I hope you find that too. It is life. <3